A Co Mayo cottage has been dismantled and reconstructed in New York as the centrepiece of the Irish Hunger Memorial Park.
The cottage, which originally stood at Carradoogan, Attymass, Ballina, Co Mayo, was last year donated by two brothers, Tom and Chris Slack, to Battery City Park Authority in New York.
The three-bedroom stone cottage now stands in the half-acre memorial park, one block from where the World Trade Centre once was.
The view from the back door is now of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, a far cry from the heather and the hill that had been its backdrop until a year ago.
In 1999 the Battery City authority, one of New York's wealthiest municipal bodies, decided that it wanted to locate an Irish famine memorial in the area. Many of the city officials had strong Irish connections.
The project is the brainchild of Governor George Pataki of New York. The chairman of Battery City Park is a Sligo native, James Gill.
An international competition was held, and the eventual winner was architect Brian Toll, an American who had spent time in Achill, Co Mayo, at the deserted village there.
Mr Toll believed that famine could be effectively remembered by abandoned homesteads in rural Ireland, rather than by the more usual style of monuments of famine ships or emaciated bodies.
His idea was to construct a roofless Irish stone cottage as the most lasting impact of famine on the country.
"It was the least we could do in memory of the contribution of the 'Yanks' to our home over the years," Mr Tom Slack explained, after the cottage was chosen.
"My aunt and and two uncles who emigrated to the US in the 1930s sent money and gifts home to our house all through the first half of the last century.
If this cottage abandoned by my family in the early 1960s now brings comfort or happiness to Irish-Americans or other nationalities who visit it in New York then I'm proud to have it there."
The cottage was dismantled stone by stone at the Attymass site by FÁS workers in March of last year and loaded into a container for shipment to America.
"The cottage was to be opened for the St Patrick's Day weekend, but work on the project was delayed because of its proximity to the tragic site of the twin towers", Tom Slack explained.
The cottage now stands almost completed in the middle of high-rise buildings in a busy commercial zone of the city.
The brown stone walls stand out in stark contrast to the cement and glass skyscrapers that surround the site.
The cottage is erected on a man-made hill, about 10ft high, constructed from cement.
It stands on a quarter-acre of ground which is being covered by the whins, grass, clover and every other species of fauna that grew around it at the original site in Attymass.
The chairman of Battery City Park, James Gill, says: "We have shipped over hundreds of bushes and fauna that grew around the cottage at its original location.
"All of these species have been carefully tested under controlled growing conditions for the past 12 months and will then be transplanted around the site of the monument here in New York.
"Because of the location, overlooking the Hudson river, this site is subject to very severe cold winds over the winter months, but we are confident that the Irish species selected will survive in this new environment.
"Potato ridges will also be incorporated in the front garden of the newly reconstructed cottage".
Mr Gill added: "Everything is now on schedule to have the official opening of the cottage on July 16th."